


sola fide

by badacts



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, His Dark Materials AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2019-10-01 07:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17239715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: The Winter Soldier didn’t have a daemon, or at least not one anyone ever saw. Common consensus in the intelligence community was that it was something small he kept inside his clothes, but there were always whispers among not-quite-senior-enough agents that he just didn’t have one. That he’d been born without one, or that he was severed, a dead man walking.Bucky Barnes, though - he definitely does have a daemon.Or: Clint's daemon makes a new friend, and he's just along for the ride. Except not quite.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madameofmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madameofmusic/gifts).



> This is my fic for the Winterhawk Exchange 2018! It is, of course, longer than expected :'))) the rest of it will hopefully go up over the next week or so.
> 
> This is for whiskeytangofrogman :D you said AU and I chose my FAVOURITE, daemon AU. Hope you like it!
> 
> The title is latin for 'by faith alone'.

The Winter Soldier didn’t have a daemon, or at least not one anyone ever saw. Common consensus in the intelligence community was that it was something small he kept inside his clothes, but there were always whispers among not-quite-senior-enough agents that he just didn’t have one. That he’d been born without one, or that he was severed, a dead man walking.

Bucky Barnes, though - he definitely  _ does _ have a daemon. 

“She didn’t used to look like that,” Steve admits one day, thoughtful and tired, half-concentrating on passing his fingers through Isolde’s coat. He’s been, for a lack of a better word,  _ limping _ ever since he returned with the ex-assassin-of-the-age in tow, drawn too thin by the stress of it. 

“Hm,” Natasha replies, which is her gently encouraging hum. Clint knows it well.

“Her coat was darker,” Steve continues, drawing a vague shape in the air with his free hand. “And her eyes were different. Not...much.” The unspoken  _ enough _ hovers in the air. James ‘Bucky’ Barnes wasn’t famous quite like Captain America was, but there are enough photos of him to raise questions.

Of course, those questions would only come up in the event of Barnes venturing out into the public eye, which at this point is looking pretty unlikely. He barely comes out of Steve’s suite, and when he does deign to grace them with his presence he’s usually sullen and silent.

“Have you seen that before?” Steve asks Natasha, earnest and almost disguising the fact that his hands are white-knuckled in Isolde’s ruff. 

Natasha hums again, this time thoughtful. Her gaze is turned inwards, a hand resting on Evgeni’s spine. If anyone knows about daemons changing past teenagehood, it would be her.

“It’s rare,” she says eventually, “But not impossible.”

“Seems like not much is, these days,” Steve replies, mouth turning up in a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

 

* * *

Sadie settled when Clint was nine. Early enough to be a red flag, not that anyone noticed. They didn’t notice he was mostly deaf, either.

He was - and still is - proud of what she chose for them: a beautiful example of a German Shepherd, coat gleaming black and tan, bigger than a scrawny nine-year-old.

One of his most vivid and enduring memories of Phil Coulson was being dragged out of his prison cell and into a dingy interview room to be stared at by a suit whose hair was already thinning and what seemed, at the time, to be a rather unsuitably exotic caracal daemon. Even as Clint was thinking that, Phil took one look at Sadie and announced, “Loyal, clever, and trainable. Seems like that might be wasted in a prison cell.”

‘Loyal’ got him into that cell, and maybe ‘trainable’ got him out of it and into SHIELD’s employment, but it’s the fourth unspoken trait that has seen him sticking to his white hat since: tenacity. Though it’s usually referred to as ‘blind and dumb stubbornness’ in regards to him.

Case in point: Sadie and Barnes’ daemon are currently engaged in what can only be called a staring contest across the floor of the main lounge.

Clint has been nudging Sadie with his toe for the last five minutes to no avail, which pretty much figures. She is, at least, lying on her belly with her head between her front paws, and is therefore as about as unthreatening as she ever gets. 

Barnes’ daemon is hunched up, her back spiked like a white fin and her mouth hanging open as she stares back. She has a lot of teeth inside of that mouth, Clint notes. He wishes Sadie would note the same thing and  _ leave it _ .

The contest is broken by, of all people, Barnes himself. Steve has been trying to engage him in preparing lunch - ironic, considering that Steve’s cooking skills are sadly lacking - which has meant he’s been glowering over a chopping board for some time when he looks down and seems to realise something is amiss with his daemon.

He looks from her to Sadie, then meets Clint’s gaze just for a second before he looks away, quick as a shock. “Calytrix.” 

His daemon - Calytrix - seems to startle back into something less rip-your-throat-out feral, and then turns and slips back to Barnes’ side, pressing her shoulder to his knee. She doesn’t look back again.

She and Barnes have the same eyes: a blue so pale it's nearly grey. 

 

* * *

Sadie and Evgeni have always gotten on, despite the old adages about cats and dogs. They’re all warm-and-content feeling on the mat beside Nat’s fancy gas fireplace when Nat says, “You don’t need to worry about James.”

“I’m not worried about him,” Clint replies immediately, because he’s not. Creepy snarly staring aside, he has no reason to think either Barnes or Calytrix have anything against him personally.

“You’ve been watching him,” Nat volleys back. Clint stops to consider for a moment.

“I guess,” he says with a shrug.

“He is attractive.”

Once upon a time, Clint would have yelped a denial. Now he just rolls his eyes. “Oh, fuck off.”

Her mouth quirks, but her smile is more in the eyes than anything. “You’re no fun anymore.”

“It’s all that therapy you made me go to,” Clint suggests.

It’s her turn to roll her eyes. “I didn’t ‘make’ you do anything.”

“I seem to remember you waking me up by dragging me off the bed by the ankle at least once.”

“That’s just called ‘helping my depressed friend’.”

“You have a strange idea of ‘helping’.”

She shrugs, a little bob of one shoulder. “It still worked. So, is it that conversation that you eavesdropped on?”

Damn. Clint should have realised she would know he was there during the whole Steve-asking-about-Calytrix conversation. He sighs. “You don’t ever talk about it, you know.”

The thing about Nat is that, when she really looks at you, she sees straight through to your bones. At least, that’s what it feels like to Clint. “No, I don’t bring up my daemon changing in general conversation, Hawkeye. I save that for conversations with close friends.”

Clint winces. “Message received.”

Now she just seems exasperated. “No. If you want to know about it, then you  _ ask _ .”

“I’ve asked,” Clint protests, and then reconsiders.  _ Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?  _ “I haven’t asked.”

Here’s what Clint knows: the first time he meet the Black Widow, she was not quite twenty-one and had a leopard daemon that nearly ripped Sadie’s throat out before Clint stopped him and Natasha both. The second time they met, Natasha was wearing SHIELD tactical blacks and her daemon was a black-footed cat: similar but not the same. And Nat was young, but not  _ that _ young.

“You can ask,” she prompts now, eyebrow quirked.

“Evgeni changed,” Clint says, “Why?”

She looks to her daemon, who has lifted his head off of Sadie’s shoulder to look back. “Because I did.”

“Lots of people change.”

“Not like that. They change their minds, or their paths. This was - deeper than that. Evgeni settled when I was someone else, something  _ made _ to be someone else. A daemon for a collection of personas layered over a scared child who knew nothing except killing. I didn’t want to be that any more. You showed me I didn’t have to be. So you shouldn’t be that surprised that he’s not what he was.”

“I like him better like this,” Clint blurts. It’s true, though: Evgeni suits Natasha Romanova down to the ground. “That’s not the same as with Barnes, though.”

“You think he won’t have changed?”

“Guess I don’t know him well enough to say. He wasn’t a kid when he was being the Soldier, though. His daemon wasn’t wrong to start with.”

Natasha rolls her eyes again. “Daemons aren’t ever  _ wrong _ . They’re just different, sometimes. It’s not the emotional crisis you’re making it out to be.”

“I don’t think it’s...I just don’t,” Clint tries, and then closes his mouth. A nose pushes at the crook of his knee: Sadie has gotten up to join him, her muzzle damp and prickly with whiskers.

“You’re not like us, Clint,” Natasha says, more gently now. “He didn’t change you. He took your heart and your will and turned you into a marionette, but he never changed the way you think, or the way you  _ are _ . Even if he wanted to, I doubt he could have done it. You’re the most stubborn man I know. That Sadie didn’t change doesn’t mean anything about you. That you’re afraid it did doesn’t, either. You just have to trust me when I say that you’re the same old Clint Barton I met when I was twenty and had a different daemon as you are right now.”

Clint pulls at Sadie’s ears. She’s looking up at him, her eyes dark and understanding, but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t really need to.

 

* * *

The Avengers briefing room doesn’t make any allowances for century-old ex-assassins. It’s just as chaotic as it always has been: Lucrezia struts along the table top in front of Tony’s seat, black feathers gleaming as she chatters whip-quick back and forth with Tony in her little crow voice. Evgeni snaps playfully at the tail of Sam’s hawk daemon as she soars dangerously close to his ears before alighting on the back of Sam’s chair. Isolde is, of course, the picture of patience at Steve’s side, her heavy tail curled across her paws.

“It’s always like this,” Clint says conversationally to Barnes where he’s stalled in the doorway. That earns him a quick flat look, though Clint is willing to attribute that to nerves rather than unfriendliness. He’s nice that way. “Come on.”

He thinks for a moment Barnes might turn around and walk out in protest at Clint speaking to him, but instead they end up sitting next to one another at the table. Sadie sits at Clint’s side and he does notice a big white wolf doing exactly the same on Barnes’ right.

That’s how it starts. 

Maybe Calytrix takes staring contests as overtures of friendship, because just like that Sadie suddenly has a bigger silver shadow at all times when Barnes is in the room with them. Barnes himself seems unmoved by this development and also seems precisely the same degree of uninterested in Clint himself, but their daemons? If not friends, they’re certainly something.

Clint isn’t the only one who notices this. He has a slightly obscure conversation with Sam and Aster about emotional safe spaces and touchstones, and a mostly awkward one with Steve about Clint being nice to Steve’s screwed up best friend. At least, that’s what Clint interprets both of those conversations as being about. He mostly just tells them it’s got nothing to do with him.

Wanda pauses in the doorway at one point and examines Calytrix and Sadie lying like bookends beside the coffee table while Barnes studiously ignores all of them, and then gives Clint an approving nod, her hand resting on Jaromir where he’s curled around her throat like a bejewelled necklace. Clint shrugs back.

It’s a little weird, but Clint is okay with that. Compared with aliens, it’s nothing.

He’s in his bed with Sadie curved into the lee of his body when he brings it up. Or when he says, apropos nothing, “Are you humouring her?”

“Who?” Sadie mumbles back. She has a habit of tucking her muzzle under the blankets when she sleeps, but after a moment she pulls it out so she can look at him.

“Calytrix.”

“I thought we were just being nice.”

“‘We’?”

Her furry brow creases. “You sit next to Bucky all the time.”

“‘ _ Bucky _ ’?”

“It’s his name! That’s what Calytrix calls him.”

“You talk to her?” Clint is  _ reeling _ .

Sadie shoves a paw in his face. “Yes! Obviously!”

“How was I supposed to know that?!”

“Common sense, Clint! Jesus!”

“Okay, shh, shh,” Clint says, because Wanda’s room is next door and she probably thinks they’re having a domestic over here. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t...realise.”

"You started it," she hisses.

"Did not."

"You talked to him at the briefing, you were nice to him, I thought I better follow suit. It's not my fault you didn't realise you were trying to make friends with him."

"I was just being...polite?"

She huffs her frustration at him, but at least doesn’t smack him with a paw again. “You’re so stupid.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees wholeheartedly. “That’s why I have you.”

 

* * *

Clint, for whom sleep is sometimes complicated, is not particularly surprised to venture out into the common kitchen and find someone already awake. He is surprised that it’s Barnes - well, he’s Bucky now. Even Clint can admit to that.

Bucky is sitting in the corner of the lounge, and it takes Clint a moment to realise that Calytrix is curled up between his spine and the wall, just a white ear and a bit of furry shoulder visible behind Bucky’s thigh. It’s a very defensible spot. Bucky, his shoulders so tight that both of them look fashioned from metal, seems like he needs that certainty.

For a moment Clint considers ignoring them both like he always does. Instead, he takes the couch in Bucky’s uninterrupted sightline, Sadie jumping up to flop next to him on the middle cushion.

“You mind if I put on a movie?” Clint asks, waving the remote. He’s not really expecting an answer at all.

To the surprise of both of them, by the looks, Bucky laughs. Just a chuckle, dry like it might hurt. “Does it help?”

Clint considers this, then shrugs. “It’s no worse than staring at nothing for hours on end.”

“Then sure,” Bucky rasps.

Clint scrolls through until he finds a rerun of Moana, flicking the subtitles on and settling in. He’s seen it before a couple of times - Sam’s nieces and nephew are big fans - so it’s easy to watch and not unfamiliar enough that it doesn’t lull his heart rate back down.

The film is about halfway through when a scuffing noise draws Clint’s attention to Calytrix pushing her way out from behind Bucky’s body. She stretches, yawning, and then wanders across to the couch.

In all this time, she’s never shown any interest in Clint, but he gets a measured pale look before Calytrix nudges at Sadie with her muzzle. Sadie, who is asleep, mutters, “G’way,” before snorting herself awake to blink at Calytrix. “Hm. Whatev’.”

The couch cushion does bob a bit under Calytrix’s substantial weight. Sadie oofs softly but doesn’t otherwise seem bothered as Calytrix curls up beside her, so close that they’re side-to-spine.

“Thanks,” Calytrix rumbles after a moment, and Sadie grunts in reply. Clint tries to silently contain his surprise that the Winter Soldier’s daemon  _ snuggles _ .

Ten minutes later, there’s another shift in the corner, and Bucky himself appears from the dark with an equally pale-eyed look at Clint before he takes the empty spot at the other end of the couch. His left hand rests on Calytrix’s spine, gently reflecting smears of colour from the movie.

“It’s better,” Bucky says after a long while, so suddenly that Clint twitches.

“...better than what?” 

From the corner of his eye, Clint sees Bucky’s mouth twitching into a smirk. “Than starin’ at the wall.”

It’s that expression that shifts Clint from warily-considering-the-best-thing-to-say mode his more standard banter. “High praise from someone who grew up before colour films existed.”

“Colour films came out before I was born, pal. Don’t you know your history?”

“Not much in the way of a well-rounded education in the circus,” Clint replies immediately, which is, of course, how it  _ really  _ starts.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the sweet feedback! The real mystery is, is this fic ACTUALLY going to be three chapters??? Who knows. Not me.

They’re friends. Clint’s not really sure how that happened, except for that it turns out that when Bucky  _ does _ talk, everything he says is sarcastic, and that’s precisely Clint’s language. Also, it turns out that the two of them are pretty similar. Snipers, kind of fucked up, dog daemons. Calytrix doesn’t like being called a dog, of course, but that hasn’t stopped either Clint or Sadie so far.

Clint still occasionally has a minor crisis when he realises he inadvertently and unintentionally befriended the Winter Soldier, but it doesn’t last long. It’s hard to hold onto when they get on the way they do: Clint hasn’t taken to someone so fast since he met Nat. There’s a crack in there about him and Russian assassins, but Clint’s not going to be the one to make it.

Weeks into their post-late-night-movie friendship, he’s down in Tony’s workshop icing his face and distracting Bucky while Tony does something creepy to his metal hand. When he says ‘distracting’ Clint, of course, means complaining about Steve practically scolding him for what is barely a head injury. He isn’t even  _ concussed. _

“Just because I’m normal doesn’t mean I’m going to drop dead from a minor bang to the head,” he’s huffing. Actually, now he thinks about it, there is a slim chance that he’s mostly here because Bucky is the only one who will listen to him complain, so Clint had no choice but to follow him down here. 

“Hate to break it to you, Hawkguy, but normal people die from head injuries all the time,” Tony says without looking up. “Speaking of, it’s a wonder you’ve managed to live this long.”

“Like you can talk. How many head injuries have you had in the last year?”

“A, Steve would call that comparison proving his point, not disproving it, and b, I do at least wear a helmet,” Tony replies. “Oh, and c, I didn’t survive all the ridiculous shit I’ve done over the years to die from a concussion. That would be statistically improbable  _ and  _ lame. ”

“Oh, if it’s  _ lame _ then,” Clint says, despite that he privately kind of agrees with that last point.

He twitches when fingers pull the ice pack away from his cheek. Bucky says, “It’s been twenty minutes.”

“Did they make you do a first aid course or something?” Clint asks, although he does let Bucky take it in his flesh hand. “‘How to keep normal humans alive for superhumans’?”

“Yeah. Steve teaches it, and there’s a whole section on reckless idiots,” Bucky says.

“I  _ know _ you’re not talking about me with your arm at my mercy,” Tony says.

“You’re too much of a perfectionist to fuck it up, even on purpose,” Bucky replies with half a shrug.

“You greatly underestimate my pettiness.”

“Nah.” There’s that shrug again, genial and unbothered. Tony blinks a bit but doesn’t reply - not much point trying to be the first to say something bad about yourself, even jokingly, when the person you’re talking to doesn’t follow through.

There’s a scuffle from off to their side, and Sadie yips like she always does when she’s stymied. Clint, his face prickling as the sensation returns, turns to see her mid-crouch.

“Give it, bird brain,” Sadie says to Lucrezia, who is flying a careful distant above her ears while holding the ball Sadie has been attempting to teach Dummy to fetch. 

“Make me,” Lucrezia jeers, and then squawks in absolute startlement when Calytrix leaps from her place under the table Bucky is perched on and snatches the ball out of her claws.

Tony jumps, the tiny soldering iron he’s been using jerking in a way that makes Bucky tense. Clint has been sitting beside him kicking his feet, but that shiver of tension makes him throw a companionable - and restraining - arm over Bucky’s shoulders.

Lucrezia, shrieking her bemusement, swoops at Calytrix’s ears and is ignored entirely. She’s busy delivering the ball directly to Sadie’s front paws. Considering the previous relationship between him and Bucky, Clint is half-expecting Tony to lose it, but instead he just huffs and turns back to his work.

“Don’t tease the fleabags if you don’t want to get slobbered on,” he tells Lucrezia, who swears at him and goes to sulk on her perch beside the main computer bank.

Calytrix returns to her position under the table, lying down with her head between her front paws. Sadie blinks and then rolls the ball across the floor with her nose, sending Dummy scattering after it. 

Bucky relaxes again. He doesn’t shake off Clint’s arm though. Well, Clint’s always down for some friendly bro-hugs, and Bucky has been going without for way too long even if Steve’s been doing his best to make up for the lack. He settles into it.

 

* * *

It takes Clint a while to identify that, while Bucky goes out plenty for missions, he doesn’t often venture off premises for anything else. That’s why he’s leaning against the door to Bucky’s room, tapping insistently.

After a couple of minutes there’s a bleary, “What?” from inside. Clint, exchanging a warm look with Sadie, offers, “Coffee?”

The door opens so quick he nearly falls inside - stupid silent-moving jerks - and reveals Bucky on the other side. His bedhead is  _ incredible _ . “What?”

“Wanna get coffee with me?” Clint chirps. It’s not very often that he’s the one awake instead of being the walking-dead sleep-zombie, and now he understands why Nat is so vindictive when she’s in his current position.

Bucky scuffs a hand over his face like he’s trying to rub wakefulness into himself. “You need me to hold your hand on the way to the kitchen or somethin’?”

“Not what I was thinking,” Clint replies. “You know that Starbucks does seasonal drinks, right?”

Bucky squints at him. “That some kinda joke? Because I might have lived a couple of decades in deep freeze, but I’d have to be dead to not know about pumpkin spice.”

“Nah. I want a peppermint latte and I think you should come with me,” Clint says, leaving aside the hundred bad jokes that immediately spring to mind in regards to the Winter Soldier drinking a pumpkin spice frappuccino. “You can hold my hand if you want, though.”

On second thoughts, he shouldn’t be so surprised that the Winter Hermit slams the door in his face. 

“Rude bastard,” he mutters to Sadie, and then takes up knocking again. Actually, the more accurate term is probably ‘hammering’. “Bucky! Buck! Coffee!”

He whirls around when the opposite door opens behind him, hitting his shoulder on the door frame. 

“Clint?”

“Steve!” Clint says, and then promptly falls backwards through the Bucky’s door as it reopens, hitting a large, solid shape that pushes him back upright.

“Why are you awake?” Steve asks.

“Why are you still asleep?” Clint returns. It’s a valid question - it’s after nine, Cap still being in bed at this hour is basically unheard of, except after they've stopped the end of the world again. 

From over Steve’s shoulder there’s a sleepy mumble which is distinctively  _ not _ Isolde. Steve, face calm but ears just a little bit pink, turns to say, “It’s fine, it’s just Clint and Bucky.”

Clint grins. “Yeah, it’s just Clint and Bucky.”

“Were you yelling about coffee?” Steve asks, not-very-stealthily trying to pull the door closed on himself so Clint can’t see past him. Jokes on him: Clint may be called Hawkeye, but he’s not that invested in finding out who Cap is fucking. 

“Starbucks,” Bucky rumbles from behind Clint, pushing him forward a step. “Go back to bed, Stevie.”

“You’re going out?” Steve asks, and then looks like he’s internally cursing himself for using that tone of surprise. 

“We go out,” Bucky replies. When Clint risks a look, he’s glowering, one hand resting on Calytrix’s head. 

“Sure,” Steve says. There’s another, more insistent mumble from behind him. “I should-”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Get lost.”

“Have fun.” Steve closes the door gently behind himself.

“Wonder what he’s like in bed,” Clint mutters, which earns him a punch in the shoulder from Bucky. It’ll only bruise a little bit, though.

It’s freezing cold outside, but Clint is warm enough even if he isn’t wearing the six layers that Bucky obviously is. Sadie and Calytrix walk shoulder-to-shoulder in front of them, which makes the height difference between them obvious. Back before he joined the Avengers, Clint often had the biggest daemon in the room: turns out Sadie can’t really compare with a wolf, let alone a lion.

Clint’s still the tallest though. Not that it’s a competition. 

Bucky, who is wearing a beanie he definitely stole from Sam under his hoodie under his parka, keeps his hands shoved in his pockets but otherwise looks relaxed as he keeps pace with Clint. 

“So,” Clint says into the comfortable quiet, “You like pumpkin spice?”

“I prefer my coffee less than sixty percent sugar,” Bucky replies easily.

“You’re missing out,” Clint says, like he doesn’t sometimes drink slightly burnt coffee directly from the pot. Or, often. 

The Starbucks down the block is bustling with people, none sparing the Avengers in their midst a glance. Bucky and Clint order their drinks and manage to snag a corner table which is just being vacated by a pair of young women in what Clint imagines must be highly fashionable coats. He can't personally see the attraction of mustard yellow, but what does he know.

Calytrix and Sadie peer at the space around the table, which isn’t generous, and then look to each other. 

“Let me-” Sadie says, and then yelps when Calytrix bunts her - gently, mostly - with her head into the space between Clint and Bucky’s legs under the table. “Fuck you!”

“Shh,” Clint hisses, gripping her between his knees to stop her from bursting out again. There _definitely_ isn't room for a daemon wrestling match in this place, and Clint doesn't really want to get asked to leave. Calytrix, meanwhile, settles like a sphynx in front of their table, watching the cafe at large. 

“Bully,” Sadie mutters at her, slightly more quietly, and contents herself with mouthing at Calytrix’s tail. She’s roundly ignored.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, offhand, though when Clint looks up his gaze is direct, a little curious.

“You don’t need to apologise for her,” Clint replies.

“Cal,” Bucky says, and nudges Calytrix’s forepaw with his boot.

“I’m not,” Calytrix rumbles back. Bucky rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t fit under there anyway.”

“You’re not that much bigger,” Sadie sulks, which makes Clint grin into his coffee. Apparently she’s less sanguine than he is about her comparitive size.

He jostles her gently with his thighs. “Sure she isn’t.”

Sadie  _ hmphs _ but settles, flopping on Clint’s feet and chewing at his bootlaces. Bucky looks amused by the exchange, though the expression fades a little at the next thing Clint says.

“Did she used to be smaller?” He winces immediately. “You don’t need to answer that.”

“Steve tell you that?” Bucky asks after a moment, mouth curved up all ruefully.

“He didn’t…tell me, no,” Clint hedges.

Bucky flicks a stirrer at him. “Spy.” 

Clint shrugs.  _ Now _ he feels kinda guilty about it, of course.

“You’ve got good eyes, anyway,” Bucky says with a little shrug of his own. “You woulda noticed, sooner or later. But she was always this big, anyway. Just a little different on the outside.”

“They used to say you didn’t have one,” Clint says. Fuck, he’s on a roll of saying dumb shit today. He closes one eye in a preemptive wince but bulls on, “The Winter Soldier.”

Instead of absolutely appalled at Clint’s sense of timing - which, fair - Bucky just looks thoughtful. “‘S funny. I don’t remember all that much, but I do remember that. They used to cage her up whenever they could, keep her in the transport. Meant I was pushing the limits of how far I could go from her the whole time. No matter what they did to me, they couldn’t erase that awareness. That pain. They never thought to try severing us - reckon I was too valuable to risk that.”

“That’s not funny,” Clint corrects numbly.

“She broke out, once. They couldn’t order her like the did me. Whatever they tried, it just made her wild,” Bucky muses. “Think they were more scared of her than they ever were of me.”

“They were right to be,” Calytrix growls.

“You showed ‘em,” Bucky says, nudging at her again, face turning affectionate. “They couldn’t make her a tool - if they coulda, they would have done it just to say they could. The Winter Soldier with a bigass wolf daemon? Hydra woulda loved that.”

“Fuck them,” Clint says. Bucky blinks at his tone.

“Think we already did,” he says, with a gleaming grin. “And not in the nice way, either.”

Clint deflates a bit. “True.”

“Your girl. She always like that?” Bucky asks. His expression says  _ I know all about you _ . Somehow, it’s one of the best things about Bucky goddamn Barnes, that sense of knowing. The same way Clint finds comfort in Natasha, it turns out he can find it here, too.

Sadie rests her muzzle on Clint’s thigh, her eyes huge and warm. Clint fingers the fuzzy edge of her ear and says, “Sure has been.” 

“She’s a doll,” Bucky says over the rim of his cup. 

“Well, she’s my daemon. What’d you expect?” 

“You’re alright,” Bucky replies, “Even if you do drag me out to a  _ Starbucks _ . You know how many independent coffee shops they have in this area?”

Clint gapes. “You  _ snob _ .”

Three days later, Clint repeats the out-for-coffee...experiment? Except this time he takes Bucky to a coffee shop with four one-word drinks on the menu. Bucky, of course, raises the stakes by dragging Clint, complete with the wakeup call, out to somewhere that willingly sells turmeric lattes.

“I bow to your hipster expertise,” Clint says after selecting the least wacky coffee drink - it’s got beetroot in it, Jesus - and then dodges a swat from Bucky’s flesh hand.

He can't one-up Bucky's pick, so he takes him to a hole-in-the-wall burger joint that Bucky  _loves_. Then Bucky takes him for some of the best dumplings Clint has eaten in his life, so good that he makes a scene over asking the little wizened woman behind the counter for her hand in marriage in his best Cantonese. Bucky, instead of smothering him, laughs.

He has a good laugh.

"Good date?" Sam asks Clint when they bypass each other in the hallway one evening.

"Fuck off," Clint tells him, rolling his eyes.

 

* * *

Avenging, while not technically a full time gig, is busy enough that when the alarm light starts spiralling in his room, he sighs rather than jumping straight into action. He does jump into action right after that, but still.

He straps Sadie into her vest and then pulls his own gear on, attaching his quiver to the clips on his back and then reaching for his bow. Despite his initial reluctance, as soon as his hand closes around the grip he feels the same old rush of familiar adrenaline, spiking his heart rate and pulling his lips back in a grin.

God, he does love his job.

“C’mon,” Sadie hustles, nipping at the backs of his boots like a sheepdog. “C’mon, c’mon-”

“Hold your horses,” Clint replies. “Cap! You want me piloting?”

“Let Widow,” Steve replies, half-distracted by his own kit and whatever thousands of other things go on in his head when they’re on mission. “I want to drop you and Buck off somewhere with good vantage points.”

“Where are we heading?” Sam asks, shrugging his wings on. Once he’s settled them, Aster drops onto his shoulder, gaze keen.

“DC,” Steve answers, then turns. “Tony, go ahead, act as a scout. The reports from on the ground are pretty dubious right now, I don’t want to us going in blind. And do  _ not _ engage.”

Tony, who has just slipped into the room in his undersuit with Lucrezia flying behind him, offers a jaunty salute. “Aye, Captain.” With a flick of his wrist, his suit bleeds out from the centre of his chest and encloses him and Lucrezia as one. The access door opens with a blast of wind, and he takes off into the clear air beyond.

“There’s no way he’s not going to engage,” Clint says, “I’d put money on it.”

“What money?” Sadie asks, which is surprisingly brutal of her. Clint clutches his chest.

“Steve’s pretty good at getting his way with Stark these days,” Bucky says from behind him. “Move it, Hawkeye.” 

Clint steps aside to allow him access to the locker where the long-distance weaponry is stored, watching him pick up his usual weapons and slot them into their places.

“Like what you see?” Bucky asks without looking up.

“I always did like a competent man,” Clint replies, high-pitched and faux-breathless like a bad actress from one of the old-timey movies that Bucky has been making them watch lately.

“We’re wheels up in three,” Steve calls from the rear ramp of the quinjet, ushering Nat and Wanda in past him. Clint takes that as his cue to hustle as Sadie dances alongside, Bucky and Calytrix following behind.

It’s not a long flight to DC on the ‘jet but they’re only halfway there when Tony’s voice comes over their headsets. “Put the pedal down, kids.” His voice is tight.

“What’s the situation, Iron Man?” Steve asks.

“FUBAR,” Tony replies. “I think these things are some kind of mutant predator animal, fuck if I know what. Requesting permission to engage in a rescue capacity.”

Steve considers, brow furrowed. “Can you do that safely without any backup?”

“I’m currently in a flying battlesuit, nothing about any this is safe,” Tony replies. “It’s rush hour traffic, there’s kids everywhere, the longer I wait the higher the casualties.”

“Permission granted,” Steve says immediately, and there’s a whoop and a caw in stereo as Tony rushes into the fray.

Clint looks at Bucky and gets a raised eyebrow in response.

“Fifteen minutes,” Natasha says before Steve can ask. “Clint and Bucky first, then the ground crew. Sam, you’re got eight minutes to jump.”

“We can go with him,” Steve suggests after a glance at Isolde.

“No you fucking cannot, Stevie,” Bucky says. “Listen to the lady. Fifteen minutes.”

Steve opens his mouth to protest, and then closes it again, though not without a withering glare in Bucky’s direction. He turns on his heel to lean over Natasha’s shoulder in the cockpit, waiting to scout the city as they come into view. 

“Didn’t realise you’re the boss of him,” Clint mutters, jostling Bucky’s shoulder.

“Someone has to be,” Bucky replies in a murmur. “Reckless dumbass.”

A few minutes later, the ramp opens with a rush to let Sam and Aster soar out and circle down to the city. Clint and Sadie head to the cockpit to check out their options.

“There,” he says, pointing over Steve’s shoulder. Evgeni sighs, aggrieved, but Nat does turn in that direction. The building in question is in the heart of the fray on the ground with 360 degrees of view and a smaller roofspace. “It’s perfect.”

There’s a buzz in his ear as the main comms are tapped. “Cap, we’ve got our favourite scientists in yellow on the ground now.”

“Of course we do,” Steve replies. “We touch down in two.”

Clint double-checks his gear and ducks to the ramp, clutching at the hand grip on the wall. It’d be an embarrassing way to go, falling out of their own plane. 

“Thirty seconds,” Nat says directly into Clint’s earpiece, and his brain instantly starts the countdown for him.  _ Twenty-five. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten. _

_ Five- _

_ Four- _

_ Three- _

_ Two- _

“Later guys,” Clint says, and practically rolls out the back behind Sadie in the split-second the ramp touches the roof. There’s a roar overhead as it lifts away, but he’s already on his feet and making a break for the edge of the roof closest to the fighting. 

Right as he makes it, there’s a whoosh of air straight in front of him, and for a moment he thinks it’s Tony or Sam doing a fly-by. Then Sadie  _ snarls _ and Clint falls backwards, eyes streaking after the shape.

“Holy shit!” he says, arrow out and drawn before he even really computes what is a  _ huge mutant bird flying past _ .

His aim is true, though. His arrow takes the - the  _ thing _ directly in the eye, and, with a hideous shriek, it falls.

“Okay, they can fly,” he says breathlessly, more to himself than the others, and lines up another shot.

 

* * *

It pretty much goes downhill from there. 

Not only is there a mystery combination of mutant animals, some groundbound but some definitely, definitely able to fly, but the AIM agents also seem to be armed with some kind of strange plasma weapons that do more damage than a regular gun. 

Clint is firing as quickly as he can, focussing on the creatures - some of which take multiple hits to bring them down, even with his aim - but it’s still hard to watch the others fighting below.

Sadie paces next to his shoulder, fraught with tension. As much as this is Clint’s position of choice, it’s still hard for her unable to do anything. Directly across from their roof, he can make out a four-legged white shape doing much the same thing behind the glint of Bucky’s scope.

“We can come down,” Clint offers the third time he sees Steve take a hit that bowls him over, even as he’s firing another arrow. Natasha is a blur of speed, tireless as ever as she combines taking out AIM agents and evacuating the people who are left with Bruce in the quinjet, and Wanda’s focus is blasting the creepy four-legged big cat knockoffs into dust. There’s just so  _ many _ of them.

“Negative,” Steve grunts, bouncing back up. “We need your eyes up high.”

“There are two of us-”

“We need both of you,” Steve replies, and then relents. Kind of. “Soldier, close in to our location but stay high. Prepare to come down to ground level if necessary. Hawkeye, maintain position. We still have the Hulk in reserve.”

“Copy,” Bucky replies.

“Need a lift?” Sam asks.

“You look busy,” Bucky says. When Clint spares a look - not that he pauses in searching out his own targets - he finds Sam well and truly pursued by three of the bird-creatures, his boosters gleaming blue-white as he adds speed. Aster is ahead of him, wings pulled into blades as she cuts through the air.

“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” Sam replies, and he shouldn’t sound so amused considering the stakes. Of course, it is Bucky Barnes he’s talking to.

“Deal,” Bucky says, straightening and raising his rifle scope to his eye. Clint can’t hear the crack of him firing from this distance, but he sees the results. The closest two bird-things fall. The third pauses as it takes the hit, flapping to regain altitude, and then continues to chase after Sam.

“Slackass,” Sam says, and that’s all the warning Calytrix gets to leap into Bucky’s arms before Sam catches him up going full speed, sweeping the pair of them off the rooftop.

The bird-thing isn’t quite as maneuverable as Falcon. It tries to backwing and fails, smashing into the roof in a roll of half-feathered flesh before it slumps to a stop. Sam whoops.

“Nice,” Clint says, grinning a little at the show, Sadie saying the same thing in stereo.

The distraction, though brief, costs them.

He gasps as he gets punched in the back from behind. Whirling, he puts an arrow to his bowstring and fires in one, hitting the yellow-suited agent sneaking up behind him right in the throat. Their weapon, glowing sickly yellow, skitters across the roof as they collapse. There’s a ripple of gold from under their suit as their daemon breaks apart.

“Clint,” Sadie says, voice wobbling, and he looks down and finds an unnerving amount of blood blossoming from an exit wound in his abdomen.

“Fuck,” he gasps, taking a knee. His fingers skitter over the wound because pressure  _ hurts _ , and he abruptly remembers the SHIELD medic who trained him in proper first aid saying  _ all bleeding stops eventually but it pays to step in before that _ .

“ _ Clint _ ,” Sadie says again, and when Clint looks to her his heart tremors. She’s fuzzing golden, like her outline is shivering and sparking.

They’ve seen so many people die so many different ways. That’s what puts the desperation in Clint’s hold when he gives up on his wound and clutches Sadie to him instead.

“Stay with me,” he whispers into her fur, eyes clenched closed so he doesn’t have to see her breaking apart. He means,  _ don’t leave me first. _

And then, abruptly, she’s being wrenched away from him. “No!”

He claws after her, eyes snapping open even as he’s forced down onto his back, his vest being torn to expose his wound. There’s starburst-pain as someone leans what feels like their entire body weight into him, but it fades as he focuses on Sadie, who is limp and pressed between the forepaws of a huge white wolf, her ruff caught between jaws.

That should feel dangerous. It feels safe instead.

“Stay still,” a familiar voice warns. It sounds like,  _ stay with me _ .

“Yeah,” Clint replies woozily, suddenly very aware of his heart skipping through palpitations in his chest, and that’s the last thing he thinks for a while.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah it's not gonna be three chapters.

He wakes up. That is, in and of itself, pretty impressive.

It’s night in that never-quite-dark way hospital rooms are, light creeping from the hall and the monitors. He can’t hear anything, and reaching for his aids feels impossible. He’s so  _ heavy _ .

The most familiar thing is Sadie’s weight beside him on the bed, the even in-and-out of her sleeping breath. He’s got just enough energy to roll his face into her neck, swallowing around something that might be a sob.

He must be on the good drugs, because the next thing he knows, it’s much lighter out, and there are warm fingers fitting his hearing aid to the ear that isn’t buried in Sadie’s fur. 

“-in about three seconds,” she’s saying when it’s powered on, her voice soft and morning-low.

“Mrph,” Clint says, which is greeted by three soft laughs.

“Morning, Clint,” Steve says. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Hi,” Clint says, experimenting with opening his eyes and moving. There’s not quite the same weight as there was before, in its place a creeping awareness of just how hard the drugs are working to keep the pain at bay. He blinks until he can see anything other than a bright white-and-gold haze. “Hey.”

Steve is smiling, small and fond. “How’re you feeling?”

“Stupid,” Clint replies.

“No different from usual, then,” Sadie mutters, her voice buzzing at his side. He twitches an elbow into her flank, and then preemptively winces at the ache right before it rushes over him, taking his energy with it. “See?”

“Shh,” Isolde murmurs from Sadie’s side of the bed. She has her big head resting on the mattress beside Sadie’s shoulder.

“When can I leave?” Clint rasps, ignoring them both.

Steve gives him a look. “Don’t prove her point.”

“‘S just a question,” he huffs.

“You’re going to be stuck in that bed a while yet,” Steve says, clear-eyed and serious. Wow, Clint feels like a kid again when Captain America gives him his Serious Expression. “You scared the hell out of us, Hawkeye. I think we broke our own records for medevac speed.”

“What’s the damage?” Clint remembers a whole lot of blood and gold and not much else.

“You lost a kidney, but they tell me you should do just fine with one. You spent a couple of hours in surgery, but apparently you’ll make a full recovery.”

“Thass good.”

“And I think Bucky lost about five years off his lifespan, too.”

_ Oh _ , Clint thinks. He says, “He already got an extra century. What a baby.”

“Do me a favour and don’t say that to him when you see him,” Steve sighs. 

“Everyone else ok?”

“Cuts and bruises, mostly. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“Nice,” Clint says. Sometimes he gets a little bummed out that he’s got the medical version of frequent flyer miles, but the rest of the time he’d rather be the one in the hospital bed than one of the ones waiting to see if their teammate makes it.

Right now Sadie is snoring next to him while Isolde grooms her, and he’s warm and snoozy. It’s not so bad.

Clint blinks, except when he opens his eyes again the sun has well and truly shifted. He squints at the window for a moment before he realises that there’s a shape blocking half of it and shifts his focus.

“Hi,” he rasps to Bucky, who is slumped in a chair, dark hair hallowed with gold, Calytrix lying on his feet.

“Hey,” Bucky replies. He sounds level, too much so for the dark circles under his eyes. “How you feeling?”

“I got one kidney,” Clint slurs, and then glares at the IV stand next to the bed. Stupid drugs. “Uh, thirsty?”

Bucky nudges Calytrix up and stands, going to the little table by the bed and producing a bottle with a straw in it. “I’d’a got coffee, but I doubt you’re allowed.”

“Ugh,” Clint says, because  _ coffee _ . God, he’s been unconscious for god knows how long, he must be just about detoxing at this point. On the other hand, the water tastes like the actual elixir of life when Bucky manoeuvres the straw into his mouth. 

“Don’t go crazy,” Bucky warns. “Crazier. You’ll get sick.”

Clint ignores this, though he’s stymied by Bucky pulling the straw away. “Hey!”

“Just give it a second to settle,” Bucky replies, rolling his eyes. True to his predictions, Clint feels a twitch of nausea in his belly before it stills again. When Bucky offers him another drink, he shakes his head.

“You okay?” he asks instead, blinking up at Bucky.

“Better than you, pal,” Bucky replies, setting the bottle aside. There’s a white fur shark’s fin just protruding over the edge of the bed, ceaselessly moving. “I still have both my kidneys.”

“Would yours grow back?” Clint asks, and then huffs. “Cal.  _ Cal.” _

He’s not sure which of them is more surprised when her head jerks up into view to look at him. The two of them are scary-alike when they look confused. 

Clint pats at the mattress beside Sadie. “C’mere.”

“There’s not enough room,” Bucky starts. Calytrix rumbles at him to cut him off, circling the bed and then hopping neatly up on Sadie’s side. There  _ isn’t _ much room, but she balls up pretty small, pressing against Sadie and protected from Clint by the bedsheets. He can feel her warmth though.

Sadie snuffles, and then sneezes herself awake. “Huh? What? Oh.”

“Oh?” Calytrix asks, amused, and then gets licked on the face for her trouble. Turns out that she looks a hell of a lot less intimidating when she’s trying to wipe her snout on Clint’s unrepentant daemon, nose wrinkled in disgust.

There’s a creak that pulls Clint’s attention back to Bucky as he manoeuvres the armchair closer to Clint’s bedside with less effort than anyone normal would require. When he sits down, he’s close enough to rest an elbow on the ‘free’ side of Clint’s mattress, which is considered ‘free’ in inverted commas because Clint is potentially in danger of being pushed off there now.

“Steve says I don’t need two kidneys,” Clint mumbles. Bucky has a nice face, even tired like he is. “Sorry.”

“He would say that,” Bucky replies, complete with eye-roll, before he pauses. “Wait, what?” 

“Sorry,” Clint repeats, “You were scared.”

He remembers that now - the pressure-pain of his wound, Bucky’s sharp voice, all command, his getting-blurrier face hovering over Clint’s own. There’s always an element, in their job, of having to hold fast even in the worst situations, but that doesn’t mean the feelings aren’t there. They’re just saved for later, outside the heat of battle. 

Unless you’re Clint, in which case they’re repressed until you cry them out at an inopportune moment. Whatever.

Bucky blinks at him, and maybe it’s a trick of the light, but he looks a little pale, a lot surprised. Maybe he’s not used to his fear being addressed so openly, or maybe he just wasn’t expecting the apology.

“You’re the first friends we’ve made in seventy years,” he says, after a moment. “So if you die, I’m gonna bring you back just to kill you again.”

Well, that’s...something. Clint mumbles, “What about Sam?”

Bucky looks affronted. It’s better than that washed-out shock. “Sam and I aren’t  _ friends _ .”

Clint snort-laughs at his expression, then jolts. “Ow.”

Bucky’s metaphorical ears prick up. “You hurtin’?”

“In my inside parts,” Clint says, and then grins a bit. “‘S not so bad. Good company, comfy bed - what more could I want?”

“I can call the doctor-”

“Nah. Just don’t make me laugh. Shouldn’t be a struggle for you, you’re not that funny.”

Bucky rolls his eyes again, but his voice is still pretty warm when he says, “Guess you’re the one in charge of bringing the funny. If that’s what you call it.”

“Whatever,” Clint replies around a yawn. He feels content, and he knows it won’t last, and he’s eager to make the most of it for now. He lets his eyes slip closed again, figures Bucky won’t hold it against him. “You like it.”

He’s almost asleep when he swears he hears Bucky mutter, “Christ only knows why.”

 

* * *

In the rush to get out hospital, Clint always forgets just how painful and awkward the first few days of being home always are. There’s nothing to make you miss a catheter like trying to haul your injured ass to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Nat moves into his suite at first, and then, after she peels him off the bathroom floor at 3AM, into his bed. Apparently people who refuse to ask for help lose the privilege of sleeping alone.

“For old time’s sake,” she says as she climbs under the covers, and doesn’t even smother him when he rolls up against her in his sleep later. 

It’s okay. He’s had worse, technically - there was a time when he broke both an arm and a leg, and then had a concussion on top of it, and couldn’t do sweet fuck-all for himself for six weeks. This time he’s useless for the better part of a week before he finally has the energy to limp to the elevator and then out into the communal floor, using Sadie as a grumpy crutch.

“Should you be up?” Wanda asks, fluttering around him as he lowers himself onto the couch.

“Didn’t ask,” Clint replies, less breathless than he expected he might be. Sadie settles at his feet on her side, stretching her toes and groaning. “I was bored. Needed to see the sights.”

“The sight of daytime television?” She takes the cushion next to his, Jagomir slipping down in her lap and flicking his tongue at Clint. 

“More like the sight of you,” Clint says, and chucks her under the chin to make her smile. Then he flicks through a dozen channels of infomercials. “Oh, I see what you mean. Billionaire patronage and we still can’t get a decent cable package?”

“Friday, can you pull up the movie directory, please?” Wanda asks, elbowing Clint gently like she thinks the AI might get offended by Clint bad-mouthing Tony. Of course, Friday might - Tony’s creations, like their master, tend towards the temperamental.

Wanda chooses Lilo & Stitch, which lures Sadie out of her sulk and onto the couch. Despite the fact that she wasn’t technically injured, she’s itchy and irritable with his pain, not to mention snappish at his attitude. It’s always easier being the injured one than being the one who has to watch the other struggle. Clint doesn’t hold it against her.

It’s not long before they’re joined by Nat and Evgeni, who give him matching looks but don’t say anything, instead curling up together in one of the armchairs. Steve and Isolde are next, Steve ruffling Clint’s hair on the way past, and then Sam and Aster. Bruce, his delicately beautiful tree frog daemon perched on his shoulder, drags Tony and Lucrezia in afterwards, taking a detour via the kitchen for coffee before joining. Bruce and Lilo take the remaining armchair, and Tony looks around and shrugs before perching himself on the arm of Steve’s seat.

There are two notable exceptions, and maybe Clint’s the only one who notices, but he doesn’t think so. He catches Nat glancing at her phone with a little crinkle between her brows that she smoothes as soon as she notices Clint watching her. 

The thing is, it’s not the first time: like always, everyone makes the effort to visit their injured teammates even when they’re laid up and cranky -  _ especially  _ when they’re laid up and cranky - but, in the parade of Avengers through Clint’s bedroom, Bucky and Calytrix have been conspicuous in their absence. 

It continues, too. Clint, now technically mobile, spends the next few days post-movie hanging around the communal area during the daylight hours, either socialising with whoever happens to be around or napping on the couch. There aren’t any callouts for the Avengers which is nice - he doesn’t have to feel left out, seeing as he’s been benched, according to Steve, ‘for the foreseeable future’ - but also sad, because it becomes obviously pretty quick that they’re actually being avoided.

It’s not a good feeling. He and Sadie don’t talk about it until they do, late at night in keeping with their custom for ‘feelings’ discussions.

“I don’t get it,” Clint says, apropos nothing as long as you’re not most of the way inside his head like Sadie is. 

“It might not be us,” Sadie replies, because it’s her job to be the voice of reason most of the time, except it doesn’t at all like she believes it even as she says it.

“What, you think it’s some kinda coincidence?” 

“Maybe.”

Clint snorts. “We didn’t  _ do _ anything.” He nearly died, but that’s like a once-a-month occurrence. Not worth a friend-dumping.

“He has other stuff going on,” Sadie says. “Sitting in his room. Cleaning his guns. Therapy? I don’t know.”

Clint squints up at the ceiling. “New hobby?”

“Knitting,” Sadie says, and then shoves her snout under his forearm. Her nose is cool. “Doesn’t matter. He’ll come around.”

“I guess,” Clint replies. Sadie doesn’t say anything before he takes his aids off to sleep.

Of course, he dreams: of that breathless surprise of being hit all twisted around, his father looming over him, Sadie too small and unprotected and fading away as he watches, unable to move.

Sadie wakes him before the thrashing can set his healing back. They go down to the common area, but it’s empty, and he spends the rest of the night with the television flashing silently, Sadie in his lap.

When the sun rises, he resolves to put it all to the back of his mind. Arguably, he has more important things to worry about, the first and foremost being physical therapy. His physio is a tiny woman called Ebele who seems to delight in making Clint sweat and, if necessary, cry. Her orangutan daemon and Sadie get to sit and watch, because Clint suffering is definitely audience-worthy entertainment.

They mostly use the Avengers gym because it’s more private than the others, which of course means he also has the chance to have a bigger audience. Natasha likes to watch in silence -  _ judgemental _ silence - but never misses the chance to make a crack at his expense before she goes. Clint can recognise how she is when she’s worried, or was worried, so he doesn’t take it personally. 

Sam and Rhodey are chill about it, only sticking around long enough to cheer him up. Steve is critical, not that he probably realises it. Tony is fucking annoying, not that he deigns to enter the gym unless Steve forces him to show up. 

He spends an unfortunate amount of time sitting on the mats and trying to get his breath back - something about diaphragm damage, whatever. His chest fucking hurts.

“You’re doing good,” Ebele tells him, because she likes to seem nice even though she’s actually a sadist. 

“I hate you,” Clint replies. Gasps. 

“Doesn’t change that you’re doing good,” she says, unphased. “Couple more reps and then you’re done.”

Clint has worked his way through rehab for half a dozen arm and shoulder injuries, but this feels way more annoying. “I don’t even need my lungs to shoot.”

“You need them to stay alive,” Ebele points out. “Also, you do need your abdominals.  _ Also _ , the quicker you stop complaining and get on with it, the closer you are to getting signed off on range time.”

Clint isn’t stupid enough to think he’s going to be allowed back on the range any time soon. The thing about injuries is that there’s a point where healing is just time. He knows that, but it’s still annoying. It would be annoying if his job was just something he loved or needed, and not something that the fate of the world literally hangs on sometimes.

“Fine,” he huffs, slumping onto his back again in preparation for more sweating.

Behind him, the doors swing open. He doesn’t think anything of it until he notices how Sadie’s ears have pricked up. She gives him a wide-eyed, weighted look, trying for subtle but missing by a country mile.

Clint, who is more subtle, thankfully, rolls his head to look over his shoulder and sees that Bucky and Steve have come in wearing training gear, Isolde and Calytrix shoulder-to-shoulder behind them. He’s not expecting the way he feels at the sight of them here so suddenly, looking exactly the same as they did the last time he saw them.

Steve smiles when he sees Clint looking. “Working hard, Hawkeye?”

“Always,” Clint replies, grinning back crookedly. 

“Keep it up,” Steve bolsters. He must be in a good mood because he hasn’t started quizzing Ebele on Clint’s progress. “You’ll be back on the roster in no time.”

“Fingers crossed. I miss sparring. Not with you, obviously. Maybe Sam.”

“I’ll remind you you said that later,” Steve says, and nods to Ebele. “Ma’am. Thanks for your hard work.”

“He is hard work, isn’t he,” Ebele muses, but she’s smiling. “Soon he’ll be your problem again. But for now, we need to keep working.”

It’s - fine. As a human interaction, it’s fine. It’s just there’s a notable absence of words, and Clint can’t really ignore it. He’s the kind of person who can’t resist niggling at a sore tooth, so it’s not surprising he blurts, “Hi Bucky. Hi Cal.”

“Hey,” Bucky replies. He sounds...flat. Turns out Clint hadn’t noticed how much emotion there usually is in his voice until it’s all gone.  _ Ouch _ .

Clint watches them into the roped off ring in the far corner and then turns his head back up to the gym ceiling. He can feel Ebele waiting for him but he ignores it just for a second, all the while fully aware that she can see his expression and that it’s probably pathetic. At least she isn’t nice to him or anything horrible like that.

“Come on,” Sadie mutters. Clint huffs a sigh but obeys.

 

* * *

Mornings have always been the worst, and having a gaping wound in his torso hasn’t improved them at all.

(His doctors would probably object to him calling it ‘gaping’ after all the work they did to put him back together, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them).

He ends up flopped over the kitchen bench, coffee mug curled in one hand and his cheek resting on the cool marble. He already drank all the coffee, of course, and the caffeine boost he needs to get more just hasn’t arrived yet.

“Coffee IV,” Sadie mumbles from down by his feet somewhere. “Chew on the beans. Something.”

“In a minute,” Clint replies. By then it’ll have taken effect and he’ll be able to do something other than lie here. Probably.

Then he’s jerking as a hand removes the mug from his fingers, nearly sliding onto the floor in a rush. It’s only a grip on the back of his shirt that keeps him from eating it, and even then the jolt still hurts.

“Ah,” he gasps, trying to remember how his legs work and mostly succeeding. Turns out adrenaline has finished the job the coffee started.

“Jesus, Barton,” a familiar voice growls, and he’s towed off the bench and pushed into one of the bar seats instead. Probably more gently than he deserves, really.

He’s left blinking up the face of the previously-reclusive ex-assassin he’s been missing for days, a face which has an  _ expression  _ on it, which is the only explanation he has for the grin that spreads over his face. “Bucky!”

Bucky looks taken aback by this. Sadie, who he can see behind Bucky’s hip, is staring at him like he’s gone insane, her impression trying to imply  _ we’re pissed at them, remember? _

“I haven’t seen you around,” Clint continues, mouth well ahead of brain.

Bucky has a great poker face, but Clint is pretty good at reading people, even poker-face champions, and Bucky looks distinctly twitchy. He says, “We’ve been busy.”

“Okay,” Clint replies, aiming for ‘casual agreement’ and instead hitting notes of ‘disbelieving’ and maybe a little ‘hurt’.

Well, fuck it. He  _ is _ hurt. He’s not stupid enough to think they were never really friends, that he missed a clue somehow all those times they went for coffee or watched late night movies or talked about shit. He didn’t do anything to warrant this stupid silent treatment or an excuse that fucking bad, and if he makes Bucky feel guilty about it then it’s probably what the guy deserves.

Bucky’s shoulders hunch. “What were you doing, anyway?”

“Sleeping, obviously,” Clint replies. “Gathering energy for more coffee.”

“You should be in bed,” Bucky mutters, and then reaches over the breakfast bar to put a full mug of delicious, life-giving elixir down in front of Clint.

“Oh thank god,” Sadie sighs. Clint is too busy inhaling half the mug and scalding the roof of his mouth in the process to say anything. Worth it.

“Oh, Buck,” Clint says once he’s swallowed, “You  _ do _ love me.”

He nearly drenches himself with coffee when there’s the rapid and distinctive scrabbling of claws-vs-fancy-floor-tiles from Bucky’s side of the bench. Sadie says, “Cal?”

Clint can’t see Calytrix, but when he looks up he can very clearly see the colour draining from Bucky’s face. 

Suddenly sure that he’s about to watch him faint, Clint half-lurches across the bar as if to steady him. Before he can actually touch skin, Bucky jerks backwards. “Don’t-”

“Jesus,” Clint says, at least a little because in his hurry he just banged himself pretty hard. He pulls his hand back and presses it to his side like that might ease the ache. “Are you okay?” 

“Fine,” Bucky grits, shaking his head. Then, Calytrix at his heels, he storms out of the room.

Clint, heart beating rapidly in his chest, says, “What the fuck?”

Sadie jumps up to rest her paws on Clint’s thigh, whiskering at Clint’s hand where it’s still clutching his new scar. “Are you okay? Clint!”

“Yeah,” Clint says faintly, not stopping her from nosing his shirt up to check nothing’s bleeding. He’s kind of surprised it isn’t. “What the hell, Sadie? I didn’t even -”

\-  _ say anything _ . 

He - stops. Because he very much did say something, but that - that doesn’t make sense.

“I’ve never seen her like that,” Sadie whispers rapidly, pawing at his thigh. He wraps a distracted arm around her. “She just looked-”

“Damn,” Clint says. “Oh, fuck.  _ What _ ?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S BEEN 84 YEARS.
> 
> Feelings (dysfunctional ones) ahoy:

The thing about Clint Barton is that he has never, ever been able to leave anything alone. 

“What are you doing,” Sadie hisses from behind him. She hasn’t grabbed his clothes yet to start dragging him back to his room, but it’s only a matter of time.

“What I should have done days ago,” Clint replies, which would be a lot more impressive if he wasn’t making his way with one hand carefully pressed to the walls at all times. If he goes down now, he’s probably not getting up again without human assistance, and that’s not how he wants his day to go.

The door to Bucky’s room is firmly closed. This time, Clint skips the polite knocking and proceeds straight to hammering at the door.

He feels - panicked. Sore, but mostly panicked, his heartbeat funny in his chest. He’s not even entirely sure why he’s doing this, but he’s a creature of instinct, and this is what his hindbrain is telling him to do.

“Why are you like this?” Sadie demands, though she doesn’t stop him, which is as good as permission. “I’m sure they’ve-”

“Got a reason?” Clint says, speaking up over his own knuckles versus wood. “Because option A seems like major surprise homophobia, and I haven’t got past that one to consider the other options yet.”

“I don’t really think-”

“You know how you know for sure? You ask,” Clint grits. “Barnes! Open the goddamn door!”

“Jesus Christ, Hawkeye,” a familiar but unexpected voice says from behind him. “He’s not in there.”

Clint, who jumped so hard at the sound of Tony’s voice he nearly put his fist  _ through _ the door, turns and snarls, “Where the hell is he then?”

“He’s not wearing a GPS collar, Barton,” Tony grumps. He’s wearing sweatpants and an oversized shirt, Lucrezia perched on his shoulder. “But he dragged Steve out of here about five minutes before you showed up, so I do know he’s not  _ here _ .”

“You’re sleeping with Cap?” Sadie asks, and then she and Clint both make a matching pair of surprised-realisation squawks. 

“Oh my  _ god _ ,” Clint says, right as Tony sighs, “Fuck.”

There’s an awkward silence where Clint considers his ability to deal with this new piece of information right now in this moment. It’s not looking great, honestly. He doesn’t  _ care _ , he just isn’t mentally equipped for it. And neither is Sadie, apparently.

“That’s cool, that’s fine,” she babbles, “We’re just looking for Bucky and Calytrix, we don’t care about who you’re sleeping with, I’m sorry-”

“It’s fine,” Tony interrupts. He mostly sounds kind of amused. “What did Barnes do, anyway?”

“Um,” Clint attempts. At this point, he’s possibly forgotten. Maybe his brain isn’t working so good. “He’s...being a dick.”

“Isn’t that kind of a lifestyle for him?”

“That’s you you’re thinking of,” Sadie tells Tony, tart. 

“Obviously,” Tony replies, shrugging the non-Lucrezia shoulder. He looks from Sadie up to Clint, and seems to do a double-take. “You okay there?”

He’s...maybe his heartbeat feels funny not because of feelings and fear, but because -

“I’m gonna faint,” he realises, and his voice sounds sort of distant even though he knows his aids are in and fine, and his ears are roaring -

“Fuck!” Tony says, and somehow he’s holding Clint up, mostly. Clint’s sort of sagging. “If you go down you’re taking me with you don’t you dare-”

“Get him inside,” Lucrezia recommends from where she’s flapping over their heads.

“Luce, honey, he’s half a foot taller than me, you think I’m going to try a fireman’s lift?”

“Lay him down and elevate his feet, boss,” Friday says over top of them both, which is how Clint ends up on his back on the floor of the hallway with Tony Stark holding his feet in his lap.

“I’m fine,” Clint mumbles, even though he’s sweating a truly uncomfortable amount and pretty sure he’s about to puke. Sadie is tucked between his side and his arm, shivering and silent.

“...drop in blood pressure limits blood supply to the brain and leads to fainting. Common triggers include emotional distress, pain and blood,” Friday is reciting like she’s reading off the wikipedia page.

“He’s an assassin that faints at the sight of blood?” Tony hisses.

“I think it’s probably the pain thing,” Lucrezia replies. Her tone makes very clear the ‘ _ duh _ ’ she wants to let out.

Tony pulls up Clint’s shirt to peer at his side. “Looks okay.”

“What do you know? You couldn’t pass a community first aid course if someone held a gun to your head,” Lucrezia says. “Call Bruce.”

“I’m fine,” Clint reasserts. He actually is feeling much better now, it turns out. Either listening to Tony bicker with his daemon has healing properties, or his blood pressure is climbing off the floor. “Don’t call anyone.”

“No calling,” Sadie mumbles. She has the edge of Clint’s sleeve held in her mouth.

Tony twitches and looks down the hall. “Uh, about that...”

“What?” Clint asks, turning his head against the carpet just in time to see the elevator doors at the end of the hallway slip open.

“-can’t help,” Steve is saying, before pausing mid-step to take in the scene. “Tony?”

“Hawkguy passed out,” Tony replies immediately, because he’s a dick. Clint aims a kick at him, but his legs are still kind of wobbly so it doesn’t connect hard. The ‘oof’ Tony lets out is probably exaggerated. 

“I’m fine,” Clint says, pushing himself up to sit and pulling his feet away from Tony. “Actually, I’m just gonna-”

Standing up is a bad idea, it turns out. He can  _ feel _ his blood draining downwards as his blood pressure plummets all over again.  _ Oh boy _ , he has time to think before everything spots out of his vision for the second time in less than ten minutes.

When he comes to, he’s lying down again, though he’s been upgraded from carpet to cushions, by the feel. He can’t feel his toes or his scalp, but Sadie is a comforting weight across his chest. 

“Don’t move,” a voice rumbles in his ear, and when he blinks his blurred eyes open there’s a big wolf face filling the extent of his vision. 

“Mrph,” he says, curling an arm around Sadie’s bulk. 

“Are you really homophobic?” Sadie asks, with an unfortunate clarity and volume.

“...I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Steve says from somewhere nearby. 

“I’m not,” Tony says. “Have you got unplumbed discriminatory depths, Barnes?”

“Fuck off, Stark,” comes the weary reply. “ _ Don’t move. _ ”

“I’m not,” Clint mumbles back. He’s just shifting Sadie’s hind foot off of his still-tender side, and maybe, possibly, attempting to clamp her mouth shut. She evades him by dint of having not been recently unconscious.

“I’m watching you move right now.”

“Don’t watch, then,” Sadie snarls, which is when Clint realises she’s all tension, chest pressed firmly to his and the fur along her spine rippled up. 

She’s like him in that she doesn’t have much of a temper. She’s unlike him in that when she does get pissed, she’s kind of scary.

“Fine,” Bucky replies. “I’m out.”

“I think you better -” Tony starts.

“Get out of my way unless you want me to put you through that door.” He sounds dangerously honest.

“Bucky,” Steve warns, low, barely audible over Isolde’s grumble.

“- stay and sort your shit out,” Tony continues as though none of them have spoken. “Because apparently you’ve upset your new best friend to the point of him fainting all over me, which is  _ not okay _ .”

“Move,” Bucky says, unrelenting.

Clint is just about to somehow figure out a way to step in when Calytrix says, clear but quiet, “Bucky.”

There’s a long silent moment where Clint wishes he could see anything besides Sadie and the ceiling. Then Tony rushes out, “Clint, Friday says you have to stay horizontal for at least twenty minutes,” and then the door abruptly opens and closes.

“Did they-” Clint starts to ask Sadie in the ensuing quiet.

“I’m still here,” Bucky replies for her. He sounds like the wind has gone out of him. “And I’m not a homophobe. Not entirely sure why you’d think that.”

“Fuck this,” Sadie says, pushing off of Clint and to the floor. “Clint, get up. We’re leaving.”

“Uh,” Clint says, but, well, he starts to do what the lady says. Slowly.

“Clint-” 

“ _ No _ ,” Sadie cuts Bucky off, which is exactly when Calytrix bowls her over in a flash of pale fur.

Turns out that a shot of adrenaline is pretty good for raising the blood pressure. Clint yelps, “Sadie!”

Calytrix, being bigger, comes out on top, her bodyweight crushing Sadie into Steve’s rug. Sadie yowls, teeth snapping, and after a long moment of thrashing she seems to realise she can’t go anywhere. She stills, panting. There’s a little blood on Calytrix’s coat, but Cal seems utterly unbothered by it.

“Be still, idiot,” she says. She isn’t even puffing. “Calm down.”

“Fuck you,” Sadie growls back, clearly no less angry for scoring a hit or two.

“Easy,” Clint cautions, his voice about as dumbstruck as he feels. “Cal, can you-”

She flicks him a sharp look and then, after an extended moment, lifts her weight off of Sadie and steps back. Sadie pushes herself up, all righteous fury, and shakes herself before slinking back to Clint’s side where he’s now sitting up on the couch.

“Don’t leave,” Calytrix says to the both of them. “Please.”

Her voice, dark and serious, is an anchor. That surprises Clint, somehow, though he probably should have figured.

“We’re not leaving,” Clint says, to her and Sadie both. He points at one of the armchairs across from him. “Get over here.”

After a moment, Bucky stalks over and sits. All the anger that had been in his voice when he tried to leave is gone. Instead he just looks uncertain, hair hanging down into his face. Calytrix sits up against his leg and Bucky immediately winds a hand into her fur, the surest sign of all that he’s feeling unbalanced.

They just kind of stare at each other for a minute in silence. Clint feels okay now physically, but his head it still spinning a bit. At least this time he’s sure it’s just emotional upheaval.

Surprisingly, Bucky is the one who breaks it. He gives Clint a careful look from under his lashes and asks, “Are you okay?”

“Probably?” Clint says. “I mean, yeah.”

“That’s good,” Bucky says, and he clearly means it even as he winces at his own awkwardness. 

“...did you know Cap and Tony are banging?” Clint asks, because it’s relevant and not ‘why are you  _ being like this _ ’, which is the alternative.

“I think they’re dating,” Cal says. 

Clint waves a dismissive hand. It’s basically the same thing, he figures.

“For a while, yeah,” Bucky says. “I think it’s meant to be a secret, but Steve’s not real good at secrets.”

“Steve  _ was _ a secret.”

Bucky shrugs. “He’s also six-foot-something of muscles and poorly suppressed rage who gets real sappy when he’s in love. Also, I’ve known him for an eternity,  _ and _ he lives across the hall.”

“They’re in  _ love _ ?”

Bucky squints at him. “Really, Barton?”

“What? How would I know? They fight  _ all the time _ .”

“Maybe. Guess it’s hard, caring that much about someone,” Bucky says. “It can make you crazy.”

There’s something crooked in his voice as he says it, his eyes a little distant. Clint has a feeling Bucky doesn’t mean for it to happen, or maybe Clint just isn’t meant to notice, but he isn’t called Hawkeye for nothing. He feels a little thrill of awkwardness in his chest.

“Are you...okay with it?”

Bucky scowls. “I told you, I’m not a homophobe! Seriously-”

“-oh, no, I didn’t mean - I, just, you sounded kinda - like, you’re okay with Steve? And someone else?”

“Why would I-” Bucky starts.

“He’s asking if you’re in love with Steve,” Calytrix interrupts, and Bucky makes a choking noise as he comes to a stop.

“Jesus Christ,” he coughs, and then starts to laugh. “Christ, really?”

“Well, I was just asking,” Clint huffs over Bucky’s laughter. He’s thrown his forearm over his eyes and everything, sounding a little hysterical, and Clint’s kind of offended. It’s not a crazy idea - before Steve brought Bucky home, Clint had kind of wondered offhand whether their ‘brothers from another mother’ shtick was a cover for ‘heart-breaky true love story’. Also, Bucky’s a closed book sometimes - it’s not outlandish he could be in love with Steve and Clint not know about it.

“He’s actually in love with you,” Calytrix says to Clint, and then he’s the one choking on nothing.

“Calytrix!” Bucky’s amusement is well and truly gone. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

She looks unmoved, mostly. The only giveaway is the little shuffle of her paws before she looks Clint straight in the eye and says, “I’m not lying.”

“Uh,” Clint manages, dumbstruck. “I, uh.”

They all stare at each other for a long, long moment in silence. 

Clint is somehow the one to break it. “‘It can make you crazy’, huh?”

“I think in my case it’s ‘crazier’,” Bucky replies, a little rueful, a lot tired. 

“I gotta say, that makes the whole avoidance deal you’ve had going on look even weirder,” Clint observes. “Why would you...if you…”

“Because I didn’t want you to know. Because nothing can happen.”

“...why?” Clint asks.

“Because of the ‘crazy’ part.”

“Didn’t your therapist tell you that’s a no-no word?” Sadie asks tartly, though not as cuttingly as she’s likely to be aiming for. She looks just as taken aback as Clint feels.

“She told me I can call it what I like,” Bucky replies. “She also told me that I need to be careful not to use other people as crutches during my ‘recovery’.” He uses inverted commas and everything. 

It’s Clint’s turn to squint. “What?”

“You think I’m fit for a relationship?” Bucky asks. The tilt of his mouth is self-deprecating, and Clint kind of hates it. “I was a brainwashed slave until about five minutes ago. I’m fucked up. You know that better than anyone besides Steve.”

“Did she say that?”

“Do you think she needed to?”

“I think you’re doing good,” Clint replies, staunch. “I think you are good. You’re no more fucked up than anyone else in this building. You think  _ Tony Stark _ can be in love with someone but you can’t?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Yeah, I do think that.”

“Bucky,” Calytrix murmurs.

“It’s true,” Bucky says. “And what would it matter if it wasn’t, anyway?”

His stare is challenging. Clint swallows. “I...care about you.”

Bucky snorts. “Great.”

“No, you’re right,” Sadie says. “It doesn’t matter. If you’re too much of a coward to try.”

Clint’s mouth drops open. “Whoa, hang on a-”

He’s interrupted by the way Bucky starts to fold in on himself. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“Bucky, she doesn’t-”

“She’s not wrong,” Bucky tells him, not looking at him. “But I figure after everything I got a right to be scared.”

He stands, Calytrix at his heels. “Therapist told me that one, too. If you were wondering.” Then, he leaves.

 

* * *

“-hadn’t really thought about it,” Steve says. “Oh. You okay, Clint?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “We’ll leave in a second. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says. “You want a coffee?”

“No thanks,” Clint replies. There’s the sound of footsteps retreating.

“You’re sounding morose, Hawkass,” Tony says.

Clint doesn’t take his arm away from his face, but he does groan. “Not you.”

“Excuse me?” Tony sits down on the coffee table, by the sounds. “Rude. I take it that things went not-so-well, shall I?”

“Fuck off.”

“Don’t think I will, sorry. Would you like some advice?”

“Oh,  _ god _ , no.” Clint says. “...for what?”

“Well, as the resident expert on century-old love interests, I’m sure I can come up with something.”

Clint uncovers one eye to peer at him. “How do you know about…?”

“The ‘love interest’ part? Well, as I keep telling you people, I am a genius,” Tony says. “Also, everyone knows.”

Clint groans again. “ _ Everyone _ ?”

Tony looks like he’s considering that. “Maybe not Thor.”

“He’s on another plane of existence.” 

“Yeah, exactly,” Tony says, and then squawks when Clint punches him in the thigh.

“I hate you,” Clint says. “Is Steve hiding in the kitchen?”

“Probably,” Tony says. “Why is your daemon sulking under the coffee table?”

“Ask her.” They’d had a screaming argument after Bucky had left, so they are  _ not _ talking. 

“Ooohkay,” Tony says, and pats him on the chest. Lucrezia chirps, “Sure you don’t want some coffee?”

Clint groans and pushes himself up from the couch. “Yeah. I’m outta here. Thanks for the couch.”

“Try not to swoon again today,” Tony suggests, taking Clint’s place with his attention already shifting to his phone. “I’m serious about the advice, by the way.”

“Tony,” Clint says as he makes for the door. “I need you to know I mean it from the bottom of my heart when I say:  _ hell _ no.”

 

* * *

Clint and Sadie don’t fight much. Too much of their life has been spent struggling to make it anything more than a waste of energy, and an increase in the already-high probability of them dying.

These days, they live in a delightful warm place where food is always available and they have friends and allies all around them. Shucking the you-and-me-against-the-world mentality is great, except for the ways it isn’t.

For example: Bucky, in the wake of his confession, is now around again like he was before Clint got hurt like nothing ever happened. Clint is grateful, and a few other emotions he isn’t really willing to look at straight on just yet. 

Sadie has decided that whenever Bucky and Calytrix enter a room, she’s going to leave it.

“You’re being an asshole,” Clint snarls under his breath, dragging behind her at the far extent of their bond just to bring the uncomfortable tug of it alive. 

“I’m being sensible,” she growls back. “You’re just too stupid to realise it.”

“You started this!” Because Clint had made overtures of friendship, sure, but she’s the one who  _ snuggled _ .

“And I’m finishing it.” She paws their suite door open, shouldering through. Clint slams it behind him.

“Is that what you’re doing?” he demands. “Because it just seems like you’re trying to punish them.”

She pulls up short, and then wheels on him. “Excuse me?” 

Clint gestures grandly into the space between them - he’s the deaf one, not her.  She heard him and they both know it. 

“That’s not it,” she says, stilted. “And what does it matter? They started  _ that _ part.”

“They weren’t punishing us. And I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure friendship isn’t making sure you hurt each others’ feelings the exact same amount.”

“They didn’t even apologise.”

“You didn’t give them a chance!” The ghost of what he’d said in Steve’s room hangs between them:  _ you were cruel. _ “And you still haven’t. We haven’t been in the same room as them for longer than thirty seconds since. You don’t think that might be an issue when we’re back on the roster and you’re dragging me out of briefings?”

“I’ll deal with that when we get to it.”

“That’s not encouraging. Besides, since when have you insisted people apologise for their feelings?” 

“That’s not,” she starts, and then huffs a growl. “He’s so self-deprecating he makes you look well-adjusted.”

“Wasn’t that his whole point?” Clint doesn’t like it, but he can understand it. “I can’t figure out what you want. Them to try, them to stay away - which even is it?”

“It’s not going to work out,” she replies, and on this she sounds firm. “This - friends thing. It’s not going be okay again and you’re both too dumb to realise that. You definitely aren’t, and I thought Cal was smarter than that but clearly not.”

“It was okay before,” Clint says. “The friends thing. He’s not gonna hang on to - that stuff. He wouldn’t, he’s not like that, and he’s clearly making an effort to be normal again, so I don’t get why-”

“Because you’re going to fall in love with him back, and it’s going to fuck all of us up,” she cuts him off. “It will, it  _ always does _ .”

That hurts. “What?”

“He said he can’t and I’m pissed about it but I get it and you can pretend you’re just going to wait for him to get over it and act like it never happened but I  _ know _ you. You’re going to obsess over him and then fall for him even though you know it won’t work and then we’ll lose both of them,” she says, all in a rush. “Like Bobbi.” She jams her mouth shut.

Clint stares at her for a long moment, and then says, “Fine.”

She blinks. “What?”

“Fine,” Clint repeats. He stalks over to the couch and drops onto it. “We won’t be friends. So you can stop dragging me out of the room all the time. I’ll behave.”

“Clint-”

“I’m done with talking about it,” Clint says. Fuck, he’s done thinking about it - Bucky, Cal, Sadie, his injury, everything. Maybe she’s right, maybe he is an obsessive who screws everything up. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t burn to hear it put like that.

There’s a silence like Sadie’s trying to figure out whether it’s worth continuing, followed by a quiet sigh. She hops up onto the other end of the couch, curling up. She’s a sprawler, only folds in on herself when she’s hurting, but Clint’s not really in the mood for comforting right now.

“Stubborn man,” she mutters into her tail.

Clint smirks, though it doesn’t feel very humorous. “Me and you both, baby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: action, babey


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heard you guys love cliffhangers lmao BYE

The second Clint gets signed off to start training again, he gives Ebele a distracted kiss on the cheek in thanks and then takes himself down to the range.

“C’mon baby,” he murmurs, stroking the grip of his bow before he takes it out of his locker. Maybe that’s dorky, but it’s been _so long_. The weight of his quiver, the grip of his bracers on his arm and hand - finally, he feels like Hawkeye again.

“You gonna keep fondling that thing, or are you gonna shoot?” Sadie demands from his usual station. The way she’s bouncing on her toes belies her dry tone. Clint isn’t the only one who has been out of sorts lately.

“Oh, I’m _gonna_ shoot,” he replies, which makes her cackle. He puts his quiver over his shoulder and mocks out a couple of draws, feeling the pull of out-of-practice muscles, and then slips into a dock. “Hoo boy.”

When he logs in, the targets from his last session in the range coalesce, glittering in the dark way down the far end of the room. Clint squints down at it, then draws and fires in one movement.

Dead center. “Still got it,” he says, bumping Sadie where she’s sitting at his feet.

“Shocking,” she replies. “Now bring it in.”

“You’re no fun.” Clint does as she says anyway, bringing the target closer with a flick of his fingers.

“About as fun as you’ll be when you’re bitching about being sore later,” she points out.

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint says. He draws slower this time, letting his body stretch and pull into the movements, testing his range of motion. It’s enough for him to know that here, in the range, he’s okay. In the field, needing to move free and fast, he’d be in trouble still.

“You’ve got time,” Sadie murmurs, watching him and reading the frustration off him almost before Clint realises that’s what it is.

“Yeah,” Clint replies. He fires, hitting the white dot in the centre of the target again. Then draws again, then fires again: rinse, repeat. It’s therapeutic. Almost meditative.

There’s a little voice in the back of his head that says: _not good enough, not good enough._ But that’s always there, and it’s not enough to throw him off.

He stops before his body renews its complaints, powering down his lane. Sadie immediately darts down to collect the arrows from the ballistic gel at the end - Clint’s curious what they do with the bullet-laced gel from the other lanes, but it’s a god-send for not damaging arrows. He splits the odd one by accident, but mostly he just gloats about that to Sadie.

“I could go for a run now,” Clint muses as he puts his gear away again. “Or _spar_. Do you think Nat would spar?”

“Doubt it,” Sadie replies. “I’m hungry.”

“You don’t need food.”

“Yeah, but I _like_ it. C’mon. Pizza?”

“You paying then?” Clint asks, scrubbing at her ears. She nips at his fingers. “Yeah. Pizza. Let’s go out, huh?”

He’s completely unsurprised when an arm hooks through his elbow as he’s halfway through the lobby, Wanda falling into step with him. She smiles up at him, eyes bright. “Good practice?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, gently bumping her with his hip. Jagomir sways gently at her throat with the motion. “We’re getting pizza.”

“Why do you think I’m here?” she teases, bumping him back.

They go to the little place two blocks down, ordering at the counter and taking their weird flashing-vibrating alert thing to one of the tables outside. Wanda slips Jagomir across her palm and lets him wind into the fur of Sadie’s back. Clint can rarely hears Jagomir’s voice - too much sibilance, even for his fancy SI aids - but he and Sadie get on well, chatting on the cushions at the back of the booth.

Wanda collects their pizzas, using just a flash of power to balance them. It’s impressive, the control she has now, but unsurprising - he knows how hard she’s worked to turn that power from a towering inferno into something that she can always manage.

The adrenaline from the range has faded now, and Clint is ravenous. He pulls out a slice for Sadie and starts in on his own.

“You’re such a lady,” he says, watching Sadie wolf down her slice like a real dog would.

“Learned my table manners from you,” she replies without batting an eye. “Gimme another.”

“Demanding.” Clint does it anyway. So what if she doesn’t need to eat - she gets enjoyment out of it, and that’s what’s important. Besides, he doesn’t want to live in a world where he has a daemon that doesn’t like pizza.

Wanda is smiling, more in her eyes, crinkling, than in her mouth. She eats fastidiously, a napkin in one hand. It’s very endearing. She’s quiet, though, even for her.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Clint asks.

She makes a face at him. “What?”

“You don’t know that saying? Just means I’m wondering what you’re thinking.”

“So you’ll give me a penny?” Her thoughts on US currency have come up more than once. Clint had thought no one could hate the penny more than Americans, but that’s nothing compared to the scathing disrespect for small change that a Sokovian has.

“Not actually - it’s a saying. Your thoughts are probably worth more than a penny, anyhow. What’s on your mind?”

“You,” she says, and grins at him. “Wondering how you’re doing.”

“Today? Never better,” Clint says, stretching his draw arm pointedly. “How long d’you think it’ll take me to convince Steve to put me back on the roster?”

“Not long enough, probably.” She gives him the fisheye. “You’ll take it carefully, yes?”

“I can be careful.”

“You can be, certainly, but you aren’t.”

“Oof.” Clint holds a hand to his chest, like he’s taken a blow. “You girls are being brutal to me today. Is it something in the water?”

“It is a direct result of spending time with you,” she replies, grinning at him. “It’s because we care though.”

Clint has majorly got the warm-and-fuzzies. “Yeah? I care about you, too.”

“We all care about you. But you’re okay, really, right?”

“What’s all this about, huh? You’re not usually a worrier.”

Wanda blinks at him, big-eyed and guileless. “You nearly died.”

Clint stopped believing that particular expression round about the fifth time Nat tried it on him. “I always nearly die. Doesn’t mean you’re usually trying to mother-hen me. Which, you’re like twelve.”

She doesn’t even kick him under the table. Instead she glances down at her hands, long fingers worrying at her napkin, shedding the sweet-and-innocent completely. “You’ve been sad.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Clint actually gapes at her, taken aback. Not even his ex-therapists were that blunt.

“Uh,” he attempts.

Wanda shoots him a quick look, there and then away. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

Clint considers his possible answers, considers how goddamn smart this kid is, and then sighs. “I’m gonna be fine. Okay?”

She finally turns to him and looks him at him directly. Even though she is, for the most part, just a normal girl - or woman, really, Clint shouldn’t call her a kid at all - there’s something gleaming red at the back of her eyes all the time which whispers power.

Clint should probably be afraid of her. He’s not, though. That’s why they’re friends.

She sighs a little, then smiles. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Steve does _not_ immediately let Clint back on the Avengers roster. Clint is about to either yell or sulk, except Steve does his concerned-dad face (oh god) and reminds Clint about he nearly died like a dumbass.

Those are Clint’s words, but when Steve looks like that Clint has a real hard time not either turning into a pissy teenager with daddy issues or someone who absolutely had a Cap action figure when he was five and who has disappointed him as an adult via his near-death experience.

“You can join training for now,” Steve says, like he’s feeling magnanimous, “But I want to see a program from the physio for building you back up to full strength.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Clint huffs. “I’ve recovered from so many injuries, Steve.”

“That isn’t as reassuring as you think it is,” Steve replies cheerfully, clapping him on the shoulder and ushering him into the gym, Isolde padding along behind them.

Then, because he’s an asshole, he pairs Clint up with Sam, who gleefully wipes the floor with Clint, but in a way that won’t actually break Clint again. Clint hates Sam. Sam is an asshole.

Sadie, limping after an extremely firm wrestling session with Isolde, says, “At least he doesn’t weigh three hundred pounds.”

“They could have made you do aerial drills with Aster. Standing leaps or something.”

“That would have been _so much better_ than having a fatass lion sit on me!”

“Maybe we should go back to being vigilantes,” Clint suggests, just for the look Sadie gives him. He nearly died way more times as a vigilante, and being an Avenger means he gets dental.

He turns away from his locker and crashes straight into a broad and familiar-smelling body, hard enough he’d bounce right off if the owner of said body didn’t steady him. “Fuck!”

This is his penance for being an asshole to Steve. Or something. This is what Clint deserves.

Bucky, expression unreadable, lets go of Clint like he burns, though he doesn’t move away. Probably because they’re in front of his locker. That means Clint is the one standing here awkwardly for no reason.

“Distracted, pal?” Bucky asks, voice mild, eyes giving Clint a quick once-over.

“Sorry!” Clint…well, squeaks. “I wasn’t watch-”

“It’s fine,” Bucky says. “You gonna shower or what? Either way, you gotta move your ass so I can.”

“Oh! Yes, sure, right,” Clint takes a large step backwards, picks up his towel off the bench, and then leaves the locker room entirely. This leaves him standing in the hallway to the gym in his socks and basketball shorts. Nothing else.

“Jesus Christ Clint,” Sadie despairs.

“I live here, it’s fine,” Clint says, and slings his towel around his neck before he leaves to shower in his own room.

He runs into two members of the Avengers support staff on the way. They avert their eyes, and hopefully their noses. It’s _totally_ fine.

 

* * *

 

And then, like Clint always knew would happen, there’s an Avengers callout. He, of course, is not invited.

“Hawkeye, I want you to be our eyes in the sky. Tony will set up a feed for you - look for patterns, anything useful,” Steve says, eyes flicking backwards and forwards over the images on the screen of his tablet. He takes a brief break from that to fix Clint with a look that says, _and don’t you dare even think about doing anything more physical than sitting in a chair watching video footage._

 Clint swallows and nods, because really, what choice does he have?

He sits down on one of Tony’s comfy office chairs, scooting up to the desk. Tony flicks his fingers, drawing up multiple windows on the screens in front of Clint all without looking up from his phone, and says, “Last one in the ‘jet is a loser.”

“A loser?” Nat says. “That’s weak, Stark.”

“I’d say ‘last one in buys dinner’ but we all know that I’ll be buying dinner,” Tony replies, shoving his phone into his pocket even as his armour creeps from the centre of his chest and engulfs him.

A presence makes itself known just behind Clint, a hand reaching over his shoulder to tap at the corner of one of the buildings on screen. “We’ll be here, I think.”

“Confirm when you’re on the ground,” Clint says, at the same time as Sadie says, “The adjacent building would be better.”

There’s an exceptionally awkward pause. For once, Clint gets to be the one to give Sadie a _what the actual fuck_ look. It’s one thing to make awkward comments to someone they’re not technically getting along with currently, but it’s another entirely to correct the assassin of the century on his technique.

That never really stopped Clint before, but they were _friends_ then. Now he has no idea what they are, but the word ‘friends’ probably doesn’t cover it.

“Maybe,” Bucky says. Cal adds, “We’ll confirm onsite.”

Then there’s the usual general rush of loading the 'jet, Steve at the front and Nat at the back, all of them talking the whole time via their earpieces. Clint watches and fumbles his earpiece out, waiting just until the ramp closes on the ‘jet before turning to look at Sadie.

“The fuck?”

Sadie doesn’t look at him, watching the ‘jet take off with a single-minded and blatantly avoidant concentration instead. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Call out the fact that you’re a giant hypocrite?”

“Shut up!”

“I kinda forgot, you know,” Clint says, faux-thoughtful. “With Bobbi, you started that too. Because you were deep in it with Herald. Because I'm the one who's slow to catch on - right?”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” Sadie attempts, because she’s a _dirty fucking liar._

“Calytrix, huh?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? It’s not like you’re mine or anything.”

“We’re not the _same_.” It sounds too much like a desperate wish, rather than a statement of fact. Clint hates it, feels the buzz of tender anger in the back of his throat.

“You _are_ me,” he bites, which - stops both of them dead.

It’s true: they are, at the heart of them, one. All of their failings, different as they can seem, stem from a centre that is the same.

“Put your earpiece in,” Sadie says after a long moment, and Clint does. Thankfully, no one seems to have noticed his absence. After taking a deep breath, Clint refocuses on the screens at his disposal.

It’s a hostage situation, ostensibly - the only reason the Avengers have been called in at all is that the hostage-taker is claiming to be superhuman.

“It’s looking hot in there,” Tony is saying, and as he does so Friday helpfully puts up what he’s seeing for Clint. There’s the usual bright shapes of people on the thermal view, most lying down on the floor of the building, but near the centre they start to haze out and merge into a bright heat far bigger than a single normal person.

“That’s not a weapon, right?” Clint asks, distracted from the ache in his chest that's half anger and half shivering frustration. He sets it aside. Compartmentalisation is so fuckin' handy sometimes.

“Guessing that depends on how you classify the enhanced,” Tony replies, thoughtful, and then, “Ow!”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that,” Nat says.

“You didn’t pretend anything! You hit me!”

“You’re an ass. Is the heat signature moving?”

“Not really, but nothing else is either,” Clint replies. “It is getting…warmer though.”

“You’re right,” Tony replies, and then says a string of absolute gibberish to Friday.

“We’re closing in,” Steve says from up the front. “Prepare to unload. Widow, Iron Man, I want the two of you to liaise with police on the ground. Falcon, get in the air. Buck, find a spot with a good vantage point.”

“This guy ain’t hanging out in front of any big windows. Unless he moves, I’m not gonna get a clear shot,” Bucky replies.

“Bait?” Nat asks.

“Bait,” Bucky confirms.

“We’re going to let the negotiator do their job, first of all,” Steve cautions. “Just be ready to move. And prepare for landing.”

“Preparing,” the entire team echoes in near-unison. Clint feels an intense burst of bitterness that he’s not there, too. Bucky could probably use the backup - this is one situation where having multiple sharpshooters is _critical_.

He huffs a sigh, and directs his gaze from the thermo-cam to the street-view cameras and satellite imagery. He sees the ‘jet duck in and land in a hastily-cleared area behind a cordon amongst a dozen police cars, the rear door opening and the team spilling out to take their positions.

“Iron Man, can you get me a link to negotiator’s line?” Clint asks.

“The Potential Metahuman Inferno might notice, if he has abilities.”

“Yeah, he also might be a mind-reader who just noticed the entire Avengers roster unload outside. What are the chances, though?”

“True,” Tony acknowledges. “Thinking it’s more likely he’s got some kind of thermic reaction going on. Nuclear Explosion Man, maybe?”

“Better fuckin’ not be,” Sam says for all of them.

“Friday, get Hawkeye a line. Oh, look, here’s head cop.”

“Shut up and let me talk,” Nat says, in the tone that says she’s smiling genially as she speaks.

“Sam, you got thermo on those goggles of yours?” Clint says, “Need your opinion on this.”

“If it’s about the meta's actual deal, I’m as in the dark as you are. Can't even get a precise bead on his basic stats or location, with the heat bleed. We’ve gone up a degree since arrival though.”

Someone curses. Then there’s a crackle in Clint’s other ear - fuck, _thanks_ , Friday, that’s his hearing aid/emergency comm she’s tapped - and an unfamiliar but calm voice says, “Sir. I can’t help you further unless you tell me what it is you want.”

There’s a long moment, and then, a crackling voice says, “You can’t give me what I want.”

“If it means ensuring the safety of the people in there with you, I’ll do what I can to make it happen.” The negotiator, though calm, has been doing this for a while. The guy has to be getting frustrated if he’s saying that.

“It’s too late for them. And for you.”

It’s hardly the first time someone has said something like that and not meant it. The thing is - in Clint’s experience - the ones who don’t mean it don’t sound like that. He feels that gut feeling he's learned to never, ever ignore, unease tickling at the back of his neck.

“Why talk to me, then? Why pick up the phone?” The negotiator asks. It’s a genuine question: some hostage-takers will ignore a ringing phone for hours rather than talk to a negotiator.

“Time,” the guy replies.

“Will you consider sending out at least one hostage as a show of goodwill? We know you don’t want to hurt them.”

“Do you?” There’s a tracery of laughter underneath, or something like it. “Are you sure about that? Besides, I already told you - it’s too late.”

“‘Too late’,” Clint mutters aloud, eyes flickering over the camera angles he has available to them. “Friday, is this guy getting any other transmissions? Radio, phone, email?”

“Detecting radio signal from an unidentified local source,” Friday replies.

“What?” Steve says, voice sharp, head turning. “Friday, can you pick it up?”

“I’m trying,” Friday says. The conversation in Clint’s left ear fades out, replaced by a different voice - and language - entirely. It takes Clint a moment to even recognise the language, because the voice is odd - metallic, or computerised.

“It’s Russian,” he says, because he’s hardly an expert but he _did_ learn some in order to make nice with Nat when he first brought her in. Before that, he knew enough to buy a drink and tell someone to drop their weapons.

“If this is some kind of cold war situation I’m going to be pissed,” Tony says, “Friday, put it over the main channel.”

“Wanda, shield the building,” Bucky says half over top of him, “Now.”

Wanda, to her credit, doesn’t waste any time - her hands move and a crawling red skin rises over the building they’re parked in front of. As she does so, the strange voice says what Clint’s unpractised ear could _swear_ was, “ _Homecoming_.”

“Fuck,” Steve says, uncharacteristically, and then, “Bucky, don’t move.”

“ _One_ ,” the voice says.

“That _fucking_ book,” Tony snarls, which doesn’t make any sense. “Friday, get a trace on that goddamned channel.”

“It’s getting hotter. Way hotter,” Sam warns. “Wanda, that shield better hold - we're looking at-”

“Nat, go,” Steve says, and then, “Wanda-”

“ _Freight car_.”

There’s nothing, just for a moment. Then, almost chilling-slow, red and yellow blooms in a lower-level window, and then another, and then through cracks in the wall as it bulges out -

\- and then everything speeds up as the building blows apart, soundlessly and without heat behind Wanda’s shield.

“Shut the air out,” Clint says through numb lips, because every part of him is saying _what about survivors_ but he knows, he _knows_ , that no one could survive that. It’s only Wanda that’s stopped all of the team on the ground and the entire street being swallowed in flames.

He knows when it happens because the fire shivers, staggers, and then falls out of existence with no oxygen left to feed it. What’s left of the building falls with it, and Wanda’s shield shimmers and dies so that the sound of superheated metal and crumbling wood falling together crashes over the street.

“Keep people out, it’s still hot as hell,” Tony says, as Sam sweeps low, “Falcon, you’re too exposed without heat protection, keep back-”

“Search and rescue,” Sam snaps, like there’s anyone left for them to save.

“Nat?” Steve asks, which seems innocuous despite the urgency in his voice until Clint finally breaks his stare from the shot of where the building stood whole a few minutes ago and searches for her distinctive hair. He blinks when he finds it on a rooftop across the street. The rooftop Sadie recommended for Bucky and Cal.

“He’s gone,” Natasha says, voice dull. “They’re gone.”


End file.
